Hi! We’re Eve and Loren, and we’re the people behind Promptly Pay! Partners in both business and in life, we both work in the tech industry (when we’re not getting laid off) and are parents to three fur babies.
The idea for Promptly Pay came from a problem that we both have: paying invoices and bills on time. Loren owns a laundromat in Los Angeles and has great difficulty finding vendors (plumbers, mechanics, general contractors, etc.) who accept cards or digital payments, even for invoices $15,000 or higher! These invoices and bills just pile up on the desk, set aside to be paid when there is time. As with most things set aside for later, this often results in missed deadlines leading to expensive late fees.
Recognizing that a personal problem is usually a good place to start, we did our research to see if anybody is solving this problem well, if at all. Turns out there are a bunch of bill paying apps out there, but they are all so tedious to use! Despite these apps advertising how easy they make paying bills, the best ones only scan very little information, leading to a bunch of manual data entry on a phone or computer. Because of this, bills end up getting set aside for when there is time, leading us back to the original problem.
We don’t! Well not with 100% certainty anyway 🙃
We have validated this idea with industry acquaintances and local small business owners, many of whom confirmed that the burden of staying on top of invoices can be overwhelming. We know this is a small sample size and our acquaintances are probably biased, but pairing what they said with our market research tells us we are solving a problem that many people across the country have, in a novel way.
Building something new is hard! Not only are there a lot of business and development obstacles, but paramount is understanding if you’re building something people actually want. That’s why this private beta is so important for us. This is our opportunity to listen and learn from you, so we can make valuable changes before we go in front of the world.
So from the bottom of our hearts, thank you. ❤️
Eve & Loren